A New Source of Hydrogen for Fuel-Cell Vehicles

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536741/a-new-source-of-hydrogen-for-fuel-cell-vehicles/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]A New Source of Hydrogen for Fuel-Cell Vehicles[/font]

[font size=4]The prospects for carbon-neutral vehicles could get a boost from a new way to make hydrogen from biomass.[/font]

By Mike Orcutt on April 20, 2015

[font size=3]A new method for making hydrogen directly from plants could be an inexpensive way to generate fuel for alternative vehicles, perhaps paving the way for hydrogen refueling stations that rely on agricultural waste.

For several years, Percival Zhang, a professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech, has been developing an enzymatic method to break complex sugars—like those found in plant material—into their component parts. Zhang’s process is “cell-free,” meaning it does not require microörganisms like those used in fermentation. Now he’s shown that it can be used to efficiently turn corn stover, the most abundant agricultural waste product in the United States, into hydrogen fuel.

Zhang and his colleagues have demonstrated that the process produces three times more hydrogen per unit of sugar than conventional fermentation methods.

The technology is still at an early stage and has been proved only at a small scale, using a two-milliliter reactor. But Zhang says the method is nearly as fast and energy-efficient as existing processes that use microörganisms to produce fuel, including cellulosic ethanol, from organic material.

…[/font][/font]

[kristopher]

1. biomass for electricity

Biofuels vs. Biomass Electricity

Findings show that turning biomass into electricity is more beneficial than turning it into transportation fuels.

By Tyler Hamilton on May 8, 2009

A study published today in Science concludes that, on average, using biomass to produce electricity is 80 percent more efficient than transforming the biomass into biofuel. In addition, the electricity option would be twice as effective at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The results imply that investment in an ethanol infrastructure, even if based on more efficient cellulosic processes, may prove misguided. The study was done by a collaboration between researchers at Stanford University, the Carnegie Institute of Science, and the University of California, Merced.

There’s also the potential, according to the study, of capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that use switchgrass, wood chips, and other biomass materials as fuel–an option that doesn’t exist for burning ethanol. Biomass, even though it releases CO2 when burned, overall produces less carbon dioxide than do fossil fuels because plants grown to replenish the resource are assumed to reabsorb those emissions. Capture those combustion emissions instead and sequester them underground, and it would “result in a carbon-negative energy source that removes CO2 from the atmosphere,” according to the study....

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/413406/biofuels-vs-biomass-electricity/

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Naturally, an article from 6 years ago is more relevant than one from today

Pay no attention to any new discoveries.

(Right?)

[kristopher]

4. It's fine to "pay attention to ... new discoveries"

It is also fine to place them into the context of existing knowledge.

Knowing that energy losses during hydrogen production and storage is what kills the false promise of its proponents, and given the substantial efficiency deficit for ethanol that is demonstrated by the older article, we can see that in order for the "new discovery" to accomplish the task of making H from biomass relevant to our needs, the process described in the OP must bring a lot more to the table than it apparently promises to deliver.

The fact that the OP itself completely fails to address the degree to which this process enhances overall efficiency of H production and use is the classic marker for hydrogen research that is of little to no consequence.

[NickB79]

3. One more time: Corn "waste" is not waste to be baled up and hauled away for processing

Biomass needs to remain where it is most needed: in the fields. Harvesting corn for food and ethanol, and then harvesting the stalks and leaves for more fuel, leaves the soil deprived of nutrients and organic matter in short order.

We're already slowly destroying the soil with modern farming techniques that plow cornstalks back into the soil every year. I wonder how many years we could shave off this stat if we started using corn stover on an industrial scale?

http://world.time.com/2012/12/14/what-if-the-worlds-soil-runs-out/

A rough calculation of current rates of soil degradation suggests we have about 60 years of topsoil left. Some 40% of soil used for agriculture around the world is classed as either degraded or seriously degraded – the latter means that 70% of the topsoil, the layer allowing plants to grow, is gone. Because of various farming methods that strip the soil of carbon and make it less robust as well as weaker in nutrients, soil is being lost at between 10 and 40 times the rate at which it can be naturally replenished. Even the well-maintained farming land in Europe, which may look idyllic, is being lost at unsustainable rates.

[Nihil]

5. Where's the profit in that?

This way one corporation makes a profit from collecting all the untidy leftovers from another
corporation's farms, a second makes a profit from turning it into shitty inefficient fuels (powered
by good old fossil fuel of course), a third makes their profit from convincing the sheep to keep
buying fuel for their inefficient ICE vehicles and a fourth makes a profit from selling artificial
fertilizers (made using fossil fuels) back to the first corporation as the soil quality is now shit.

Hey, but at least there will be plenty of photos of a single hydrogen powered lorry for morons to
spam across the interwebs to "prove" that this is all a good idea.

Dropping a MF big bomb in Yellowstone would be the best thing to happen to this planet.